Comment by CSMastermind
11 hours ago
I don't think that's true.
I was at Microsoft when they user-tested Windows 7 to death. Including installing eye tracking software during sessions so you could monitor where the user was looking at on the screen.
That data was in part used to justify the changes made in 8: "Users only click on the start menu 0.1% of the time and when they do they focus on a narrow portion of the screen."
A couple of the UX people who worked on Win8 told me that some of the UX study results were faked to give the desired results that justified the new Win8 design changes.
Def the sort of stories you hear at at a bar after work.
how do you go from
> the users don't focus on this menu much
to
> therefore we need to make this menu as large as possible
shouldn't the conclusion have been "the start menu is so great the user doesn't even need to focus on using it". it feels like desperately trying to make the data fit the predefined conclusion, despite the data screaming and kicking.
That's really the big problem with the telemetry-driven designs today - the same raw data can be interpreted in whatever way you want so designers still end up doing what they feel like but can shut down any counter arguments (including complaints from real users) with "the data says otherwise".
Yes, I'm glad somebody's pointed that out. I read that post, "Users only click on the start menu 0.1% of the time...", and thought, well yes, what do you think the start menu's for? The user will use it to load something from time to time, then spend all their time in that application.
I've seen similar before - people not understanding that certain things are at their most successful if they're unobtrusive.